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Getting Cash in Paraguay: Guaraní and Dollars

Getting Cash in Paraguay: Guaraní and Dollars

If you are planning to do business, buy a car, or invest in real estate in Paraguay, there is one rule you need to know from day one: Cash is king.

While digital banking is growing, things will move significantly faster, smoother, and easier if you have hard cash in hand.

Why You Need Cash (The High-Ticket Property Trap)

When you are making a major purchase, especially high-ticket items like buying a car or purchasing property, using cash usually secures you a much better deal.

Let’s say you’re buying a car or a $20,000 to $40,000 plot of land in the countryside, trying to send an international SWIFT wire transfer is just asking for trouble. There are two big reasons why.

Firstly, it’s often flat-out impossible. If the seller is a local who doesn't have a Paraguayan bank account set up for foreign USD, and you don’t have local banking in place yet either, the money simply has nowhere to go.

Secondly, local banks love to lock up incoming wires. Every bank along the chain can freeze your transfer for compliance checks. I’ve literally had clients send a simple wire for rent and have their money locked up for 4 months. They ended up losing the rental completely and dealt with massive headaches. With cash, you skip the banking mess and just get the deal done.

Many expats and solo builders have had transactions completely boggled up in the banking system for multiple months, leaving them unable to close their deals. Cash bypasses this entirely.

Pulling Local Currency: Guaraní (PYG)

For your day-to-day operations and smaller local transactions, you will need the local currency, the Guaraní.

So, where should you go? Look for Ueno bank or Wepa ATMs.

The Limits is that you can pull up to 2,500,000 Guaraní per single transaction. Most foreign cards will allow you to run two transactions back-to-back, meaning you can walk away with 5,000,000 Guaraní total. At current market rates, this works out to roughly $800 USD.

The Fees you will face a local ATM commission of 25,000 Guaraní per transaction, plus whatever foreign transaction or exchange fees your home bank tacks on.

Pro Tip on Moving Money: Standard international transfer cards like Wise can take a substantial cut in fees when used at local ATMs. Instead, it is highly recommended to set up a Charles Schwab International account (see our full guide on that here [Link to Schwab Article]).

While you do need to park some assets in the account to get started, they offer full reimbursement on the 25,000 PYG local ATM fees and charge zero foreign exchange fees, making it the cleanest way to pull money out.

Pulling US Dollars (USD)

Not every ATM in Paraguay carries US dollars. When you need greenbacks for larger transactions, you have to target specific machines.

The Limits & Costs at the verified dollar-dispensing ATMs listed below, you can pull out a maximum of $300 USD per transaction.

The Fee: Every transaction carries a flat $5 USD fee.

Verified USD-Dispensing ATMs:

Quality of the bills

The quality of the dollar bills matters for some objectives here in Paraguay. You’re renting an apartment, and a lot of them want to see the bills are nice and crisp without marks or folds, but for example the Garden Dealership (and many others) do not care about the quality as they’re sending them to the car manufacturers. Any time you need to deposit or use it in general, here it is always a problem with having nice enough bills

Need to Move Larger Sums?

Pulling $300 or $800 at a time works for standard living expenses, but it won't cut it if you are closing on a house or funding a major project.

If you need to move a large amount of cash into the country all at once, skip the ATM network and the risky wire transfers. Contact us directly. We utilize secure, alternative systems designed to help expats and founders safely route substantial capital into Paraguay without the month-long banking delays.